Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

theloop.ecpr.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 153 posts

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#51

Post by yokoprime »

robomartin wrote: post #44
cronin101 wrote: post #6

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentiv…

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…

> if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property

Depends on where you live. Some counties has property taxes, others do not. One reason for why Norwegians have lots of debt is that its subsidized since you can write off parts of the interests from your taxes. Also there is taxes on wealth, i.e the tax system incentivizes having debt.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#52

Post by JUNGLEISMASSIVE »

robomartin wrote: post #44
cronin101 wrote: post #6

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentiv…

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…

[dead]

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#53

Post by TheCoelacanth »

robomartin wrote: post #44
cronin101 wrote: post #6

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentiv…

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…

Property owners benefit more from local tax spending than anyone else. Why shouldn't they pay for it?

We already subsidize home ownership by quite a bit. We don't need to subsidize it more.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#54

Post by sohtym »

matsemann wrote: post #10

When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job, it makes sense to get a loan to buy a place to live and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net. Hard to get a loan, so end up renting for longer, and in turn have…

> Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net.

Educational attainment in the Nordic countries isn't actually that good. It might have been at one point. These days I think it sometimes looks good because some statistics count having any experience at higher levels, which having cost-free education facilitates. If you instead look at actual degrees the Nordic countries are average among OECD countries.

  Bachelor's degrees
  OECD Average 18%
  Iceland      21%
  Denmark      20%
  Norway       20%
  Sweden       18%
  Finland      20%
Countries above 21% in OECD: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.

Source: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b35a14e5-en/1/3/2/1/inde...

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#55

Post by the_third_wave »

smcl wrote: post #7

Not Northern Europe, but Czech Resident here. There has been an explosion in house prices here, a truly wild one. I bought my place for 3.6m CZK about 7 years back and according to a recent valuation practices is "worth" nearly double this now. It is fucking wild, and tbh I kind of hate it.

That has been going on for decades in the Netherlands, I bought a (newly built) home in 1996 when the country still used the Dutch Guilder and sold it for the same amount in €uros in 2002. One Euro translates to 2.21 Guilders, i.e. the house sold for more than double the price in 6 years time. For what I got for a relatively modest semidetached house on 220 m² of land in the Netherlands I could buy a 22 hectare farm in Sweden with money to spare. Ridiculous, that is what it is.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#56

Post by vonmoltke »

djbusby wrote: post #22
Hamuko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where the hell are people "moving across the continent every few years"?

USA. Eg: Seattle has lots of out-of-state migrants, as does SFBay, Boston and NY.

First, "out of state" doesn't mean "across the continent" (though that is more likely in Seattle or SF, since they're rather isolated from out of state population centers).

Second, that is not evidence in the slightest of people doing this "every few years". Hell, most people don't want to move locally that often, let alone an expensive and very disruptive long distance move.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#57

Post by bkor »

nonethewiser wrote: post #40

Many of the reactions here seem rather defensive. Observing that mortgages are the main driver isn’t some takedown of the article. It makes the exact same observation.

> It makes the exact same observation.

I find it highly difficult to figure out what the article is trying to say. This especially as it's trying to say something about private debt vs the welfare system. I don't understand what the article is trying to say, especially the link between welfare system vs mortgages vs debt.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#58

Post by nonethewiser »

robomartin wrote: post #44
cronin101 wrote: post #6

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentiv…

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…

I’m sympathetic to this observation but what’s your point? Just a tangent? There is nothing wrong with that but I’m not sure if this is supposed to clarify something.

For whatever it’s worth it looks like at least Sweden and Norway have property taxes. Didn’t check others.

China is an example of a country without them. Except you can’t own land in China. Your house is effective leased from the government. So not exactly an improvement.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#59

Post by whitemary »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #42

It's my understanding that the northern European countries have very low immigration rates which means that their existing (mostly native) population is entirely responsible for their economic growth. That population grows old and fewer and fewer young people are available to contribute to the state-funded "welfare" to support their parents retired lifestyles. So the debt accrues and the country eventually becomes a…

Your theory fails because northern European countries have significantly higher fertility rates than the US. See: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...

> Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is a more direct measure of the level of fertility than the crude birth rate, since it refers to births per woman.

Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)

#60

Post by jltsiren »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #42

It's my understanding that the northern European countries have very low immigration rates which means that their existing (mostly native) population is entirely responsible for their economic growth. That population grows old and fewer and fewer young people are available to contribute to the state-funded "welfare" to support their parents retired lifestyles. So the debt accrues and the country eventually becomes a…

It depends on the country. Sweden and Norway have a larger share of foreign-born population than the US and the UK. Netherlands is roughly on the same level as the US and the UK, while Denmark and Finland have fewer immigrants.
Post reply on HN